Lather, Rinse, Hello
by Crow T R0bot
Summary: All Emil wanted was to freshen up after a good night's sleep. Marta decides to step in and "help." Not a Lemon, but mature content within.


Disclaimer: Tales of Symphonia is the property of Namco, and they're damn well entitled to it. I know I'd just screw it up if it were in my hands. :P

When I first played Tales of Symphonia, I felt, as far as couples go, that no pairing could be more sickeningly sweet than one of my favorites: Lloyd x Colette. When Dawn of a New World rolled along, however, I think Emil and Marta's relationship effectively gave me Diabetes.

It didn't help that, even after they matured as characters considerably, that Marta still had some fangirlish/stalkerish mannerisms, and when the Hot Springs scene rolled around, I figured "anything goes," and thus this fic was born.

Just a word of warning in case you didn't catch it in the summary. This fic isn't really a lemon, but I've rated it M for a reason, so please be mature people. Well, more mature than I'm being at least. :)

Finally, while I don't have an exact timeline down, expect this to take place anywhere from several months to a year after the game, if you think that sort of detail is important.

Special thanks to X-DragonSoul-X and stormy341 for previewing this fic and giving me both encouragement and suggestions on continuing writing it/what to do with it. Consider your contributions...contributed. Hope you enjoy, and forgive me for posting this a little later than I promised.

xxx

Colors formed in the darkness, the first growths of something out of nothing. They shifted, pooled, and molded into coherent shapes. They became distinct wooden tiles, panels, an unlit light, and walls with closed and shaded windows from which light managed to creep through the gaps.

His eyes were heavy and slightly wet, but Emil Castagnier repeated a short cycle of slow blinks, taking several minutes before he was able to open his eyes all the way. The pupils of his green eyes quickly dilated until they adjusted to the room's dim light. The sheets, covers, mattress, and the pillow against the back of his head were so relaxing, that he spent the next few minutes absolutely still. His eyes would fall shut before half-reopening, his jaw would shift, and some of his breaths were sharper than others.

Even with a full eight hours of sleep, the boy was inevitably too tired to move or rise from his bed to get up. Even though he was hungry as hell, he waited patiently as the fatigue of awakening passed.

It gave him time to remember all the things that had happened to him in the months after that ordeal at the Ginnungagap. Becoming his own person, an entity free from Ratatosk, was only the tip of the iceberg.

Lloyd Irving had returned to finding, collecting, and destroying ExSpheres wherever he could find them, and Colette had returned to her love's side to aid him in that task. Presea had taken time off from rebuilding Ozette to accompany the Sage siblings on their journey to crack down on discrimination against Half-Elves (Genis could not have been happier). He wasn't sure about the others, but thanks to Zelos...

He had a lot to thank Tethe'alla's Chosen for. He had stressed a great deal of a one Marta Lualdi's efforts in stopping the Vanguard's reign of terror. Whatever he said, it was enough for the King to give the girl nothing more than a slap on the wrist for her initial involvement with the terrorist group.

Her father, Commander Brute, was not so lucky. Fortunately, mitigating circumstances involving a certain Centurion's core had given the king incentive to commute his sentence until it was short enough for him to meet any hypothetical grandchildren once he was free.

Magnar was not so lucky. He had a date with the hangman's noose.

But at the moment, none of that mattered. He was comfortable, but nonetheless tried to shift to his right...

...A strange resistance momentarily knocked him from his reverie.

The boy craned his neck downward, looking at the silky smooth arms wrapped around his chest and pinning his own arms to his sides by the shoulders. How had he not noticed them before?

He carefully brought his head to his left, his vision following the arms to their source. The angelic face of a long-haired brunette greeted him, ruffled and tangled by the previous night's shower and an immediate jump into the bed. Her eyes remained shut and a look of contentment complemented the gentle rise and fall her covers made as she breathed.

Marta...Even as he tried to pry her embrace apart so he could rise, the boy was happy for the all-night-long hug. Obsessive as the girl may have seemed sometimes (well, a _lot_ of the time), Emil's heart soared whenever they were close. That was something he had come to feel on their journey together those months ago.

He thought back to that day he snapped at her, telling her he couldn't be the Knight in Shining Armor she had once seen him as. He certainly wouldn't have thought then that he would have so quickly grown into just that, or that would she move past her love for that image and into love for the _real_ him.

Now, he was more than happy to call himself that (and despite the guilt she no doubt felt from the pressure she heaped on him, he was certain she felt the same).

At last, her grip, surprisingly strong for someone still dreaming, came loose and he was able to roll off to the furthest edge of the bed. Rather than get out as initially planned, he rolled to his left one more time to get a good look at the girl.

With no parents around, stuff like this was nearly inevitable. Emil, however, was not a very single-minded boy, and surprisingly enough, Marta was also capable of ignoring her own hormones. Simply put, she was...'saving' herself for marriage (Emil had been sweet enough not to remind her about a certain Hot Springs incident).

None of that stopped them from cuddling and sharing the warmth under the covers.

Separated from her, Emil almost felt a chill already. So accustomed they were, to the ritual of squeezing up against each other, that the bar had been raised for what it meant to feel safe, content, and warm.

Still, the boy didn't want to wake the former Vanguard fighter. She deserved all the sleep she wanted.

Besides, as Emil took a deep breath through his nose, he winced and reminded himself he had a little morning ritual to take care of...

xxx

When he turned the knob, half a second of metallic rattling paused before a sheet of water hissed down out of the showerhead in the ceiling. Emil did not step under it, instead holding out his arm and letting it catch the prickling chill of water—water that hadn't been waiting in a heating tank—slide off his skin. Patiently, he waited ten seconds, fifteen, twenty...and then smiled as at last the chill gave way to a lukewarm heat at twenty-five seconds and took on a soothing, steaming hot at just shy of thirty.

Emil pulled the arm back to his side, letting it drip on the carpet as he took one last step.

He still hadn't gotten undressed, but that was no problem.

With a fleeting thought, he could feel the clothes given to him as a Knight of Ratatosk melt and dissolve into mist and ether, and the slight rush as temperate air and thin steam blew against newly exposed skin. It was a rather convenient aspect of the magical uniform. Not only did it never need cleaning or mending due to whatever magical properties Ratatosk, Tenebrae, or whoever made it provided, but dressing and undressing was just a thought away. In short, it was quite a time saver.

Of course, none of this was at the forefront of the boy's mind. He just wanted to get cleaned up for the coming day so no one would have to smell him coming. He slid into the shower and closed the door of warped glass to complete his privacy.

Once under the raining stream, Emil stilled. This was how it always began; just letting it cascade down the skin and make sure every dry spot disappeared. The soothing warmth made him get lost in the tiny space and the ensuing minute. His hair clung tighter and flatter against his head, drifted over his forehead, and coaxed his eyes closed as he took time to let the feeling sink in before reaching onto a rack under the showerhead.

Shampoos, conditioners, body wash, even an unused soap bar squeezed against each other on the hanging plastic rack before he plucked one of the bottles loose of the crowd. It took a moment to identify it among the conditioners that Marta used to keep her hair lively and shimmering in addition to clean and grease-free. Both were perfectly content with the latter in Emil's case, and he followed through by squirting a blotch of mostly clear, blue gel into the palm of his hands.

Freeing his other hand by sticking it back in the rack, the boy immediately brought it up to its hair. For standing right under the shower's stream, he was rewarded with an instant lather of white suds that he quickly spread into the soaking mop on his head. Fingers sifted between the hairs, spreading the foam, scratching into the scalp to ensure its thorough distribution. The new lather foamed and churned under Emil's strokes, but after fifteen seconds, he pulled his hands free and let the suds rinse off of his fingers.

It was a strange habit, a pointless one even. Was it to get the grease and soap off of his hands so he could cleanly rinse out his foam-soaked hair? Was it just a tic of some kind? Whatever, he just let the suds rinse off of his hands while the other set continued the scrubbing. It was a nice change of pace to relax some more while someone else...

...Emil's mind backpedaled immediately. Only now did he appreciate the fact that something weaved through his hair to let the steaming water wash its shampoo and loose grease out of his scalp and into the drain. No! Forget freshening up, he could _distinctly_ feel _something_ trying to do that for him.

The rough but smooth scrubbing froze him, entranced him, but made him stiffen. Who of all people could have been...

"...Feeling like a new man, yet?" an unmistakable voice sang in his ears.

As if the last bit of foam sweeping out of his hair somehow cleared his head, the boy was able to put into one word his initial, stunned reaction: "...Marta?"

"You were expecting...Sheena?" He heard her tease, punctuating her inquiry with a girlish giggle. "So..." she asked with a growing coyness. "...how do you feel?"

Neither person could tell whether his sharp exhale was supposed to be an answer. The girl sure didn't seem to care as her hands slid from his hair.

"I just thought you might be lonely..." he heard her coo as her dainty hands came to a rest on his shoulders. For anyone else, it would have been relaxing. For Emil Castagnier, however, reflex made them as stiff and rigid as a bar of steel. "...so I thought I'd keep you company for a while."

"..." Emil's gasp was filtered through another sharp shiver. "...Thanks?"

Why wasn't he turning around, why wasn't he asking Marta to kindly step away from him? Why did Marta's touch have to be so smooth?

He managed to take one step to resolving that first conundrum. The barest backward glance started to bring the increasingly wet brunette into his peripheral vision. Under more ideal circumstances, Emil would have liked what he almost saw, but he caught a fleeting glimpse of what was at his back before he swiftly brought his eyes back towards the shower wall. Was Marta really just...?

She giggled again, "You don't have to be so modest, Emil! You've seen some of it once." The sound of bones creaking as she stretched her arms behind him indicated she was ready for a workout...and given the state he saw her in (and vice-versa), such a term was not far off the mark.

"Come on," her arms snaked over his head, snatching a bottle of body wash off the shower rack. His eyes were tempted to follow, but the boy was too flustered to indulge them. "I may have showered last night...but I can help clean _you_ up!" Yet another mirthful chuckle rattled out of her throat and through her nose.

"What? No, no, you don't have to do that M-..." but it was too late as she kicked off the ritual with a nice strong hug from behind...one that accompanied no feeling of fabric.

He felt skin, warm, wet, clean...and as soon as he realized what it was, the pressure against him, he froze. Trying and failing to steady his heartbeat, the knight took particular notice of a sensation against his upper back.

Through this particular pressure, he had learned that Marta's complaints about having the endowment of an ironing board were a..._slight_ exaggeration.

He tried to look for something, _anything_ to take his mind off that. Luckily, he didn't have to move his head much to see Marta's bare arms bring up the plastic bottle and the mesh-like mass...what was it called again, a loofa? He didn't know for sure, but watching the gel fall from the bottle and sink into the mesh was a welcome distraction from the feeling of someone else's skin against his bare back...and the warm tingling that shuddered to life in his nether regions.

Miraculously, Emil's mind still found some resolve and coherence to raise issue with what was going on. Between the two overpowering sensations—her touch and his body's reaction to it—a kernel of coherent thought reminded him that he was getting unrequested—something in his head refused to say 'unwanted'—aid.

The green gel had vanished into foamy suds by the time he was able to speak again.

"I-I...I'm fine Marta, really. You don't have to help me," the words were quiet. Loud enough for the girl to hear, to be certain, but by then she had taken the loofa to his chest and buried it under a cleansing foam. "I can take it from here."

"Aaaawww...but I just got started," came a hurt groan, genuine enough so that guilt too joined the whirlwind of more primal emotions suffocating the boy. "...don't you want my help Emil?"

In all honesty, how do you tell your very naked girlfriend to stop helping you shower when she speaks in a voice you _know_ comes with puppy dog eyes? That was the next question that confounded Emil in his increasingly half-hearted search for privacy. One that was apparently on a timer judging by how quickly Marta was working her way downward...

Emil blushed again when a glance downward told him he had an even _bigger_ problem. Did Marta honestly _not_ know what she was doing?!

To his relief, the scrubbing stopped just at the spot where a belt belonged, and at last Marta's fleshed peeled away from his own. It didn't stop his heart from throbbing (or anything else that could conceivably throb), but as the suds crawled down his body under the watery spray, they washed away his tension with it.

He was about to let the relief in with a posture-destroying sigh when that abrasive, foamy feeling attacked his back.

"Hold still Emil, we're halfway there," Marta tried not to giggle as she slid an arm around Emil's chest. Now the poor boy's heart was pounding so hard he could feel his rib cage start cracking. And if only for lack of trying, he couldn't break free. For her waifish build, Marta already possessed a strong grip asleep. And while Emil had built up more than his share of strength on their journeys, any attempt to pull out would probably result in one of them tripping and breaking something...or at least give Marta more ideas once they landed on top of each other. It was now or never, he _had_ to put a stop to this...

"Uh...Marta...?" He managed to choke out again.

"Yes Emil?" her voice, flowery as ever sang through her vigorous scrubbing.

He swallowed, "...Could you get a little lower? You got what you're doing now pretty good." _Wait! That's not I wanted to say!_

"Don't worry Emil," he felt the loofa move only a little further down. "I'll get there when I get there." There came another soft, infuriating, lovable laugh.

To his chagrin, Marta was scrubbing way too fast. By the time she had finished saying that, she was already a few inches above his tailbone.

And by the time he had processed that observation, she'd gone past it, causing him to ark his spine forwards.

"Oh hold _still_ Emil, it's not gonna bite!" It was the only irritation she had expressed thus far, and she only retaliated by moving the loofa forward to rub the left cheek of his posterior in a firm, circular motion.

_I'm not afraid of being __**bitten!**_Emil thought. _I'm afraid of...of...oh who am I kidding? _

He felt Marta move to the right and tried to relax. His heartbeat still rang in his ears, and that buzzing stiffness further down wasn't settling down in the slightest, but the initial discomfort was subsiding at least. He just focused on the repetitious _scrub-scrub-scrubbing_ of Marta's cleaning before she was at last satisfied it was squeaky clean. She then moved down his legs...

...and with her free arm stretched to its limit, she saw fit to reel it from his chest and farther, farther down, to his stomach.

There went his relaxation. The boy's face was as red as a tomato now.

"Marta!" Emil bit his lip when he realized how loud that came out. He lightly grabbed the arm, but for some reason, made no effort to move it. "Cut that out!"

"But Emil..." she whined. "I'm almost done, if you could just give me a few more seconds..."

Okay, seriously, there was _no way_ Marta could be that oblivious. Why was she playing dumb? Was it some lame attempt to put him at ease? If so, gently raking her fingers across his stomach—precious inches from the one thing that marked him as a boy—and lightly digging her index finger into his navel did _nothing_ to achieve that goal.

"...There, all done!" She chimed. Her arm stayed on his stomach, continuing to rub it.

"Don't you just feel so _clean_ Emil?" The breathy way she accentuated 'clean' started to raise doubts in the 'innocence' behind her motives, nor did the feeling of her nose climbing his back with a loud, loud sniff.

Emil gulped, unsure why he answered the way he did: "...No."

Seemingly offended, Marta released her grip and stood up in the steam.

"No? Are you saying I did a bad job Emil?" She pouted, exaggerating a tearful tone. Emil turned his head to at least glance at her, trying to keep his eyes at least no lower than her shoulders.

If she was forcing out any crocodile tears, he couldn't tell, but the frown on her face was short-lived once they made eye-contact. Her eyes shut and she gave him a tight-lipped smile before speaking again.

"...Because once you were all squeaky clean...I wanted to just let you know..." Was she shrinking? Her dripping twin pony-tails swayed as she hunched over. "...That I wasn't finished last night!"

Before Emil could decipher the meaning of those words, he stumbled forward, almost smashing face-first into the shower wall as 95 pounds of naked girlfriend gave him the strongest, wettest, slippery...est hug she'd given him yet. Wait a minute, he felt another sensation wrap around him too. Two hugs?

Looking down, Emil realized why Marta felt so heavy. She had wrapped her legs around his waist from behind, and they held him in a vise-grip just as surely as the arms around his shoulders. Enough fuel had already been added to his inner fire before he realized he had, on reflex, grabbed her upper legs to help support her weight.

If he was sweating, no one could tell.

"Oh Emil..." She cooed. Still ostensibly as 'innocent' as ever, "You're so clean I could just eat you up!"

Like that was going to lighten the mood! Emil grimaced, but as Marta leaned her head over his shoulder, he saw that she probably wouldn't notice. Her eyes were closed in contentment, and no amount of opening them would let her see his look anyway. Not when she was rubbing her right cheek against his left one like a cat rubbing its owner's leg.

Let it be said for the record that cats indulging in such behavior are marking their owners as their property.

"Hmm?" Marta's strange massage froze thirty seconds in when she made that muffled vocalization, and her breathing stilled (it was hard for Emil not to notice when her chest was pressed against the back of his head). Her left arm pulled away from the boy's chest and reached downward.

_Oh no. Marta, please don't!_ Emil's knees buckled, yet he couldn't bring himself to put those thoughts into speech. He could have—was always able to—stopped this invasion of privacy with a single, coherent, _"stop!"_ But now Marta was reaching downward, to the only thing _interesting_ that could be in that direction. Why wasn't he stopping her now?

Why should he?

"Oh, _Emil!_" Came a breathless near shout. She had found her mark...

...and yet he didn't feel her grip where he should have, or anywhere else for that matter. What the?

Daring to peek, he saw Marta's hand move back up past his face, now streaked with a scarlet stain, dripping off her fingertips under the water he had forgotten was still running. She saw her thumb rub against each tip, wiping away the mysterious stain, and Emil followed it down.

Her leg!

Marta's left knee, overlapping the other, had a crimson stream cascading down its length, curving over the side, and landing on the lip of the drain before the grating swallowed it. Emil's already swift beating heart raced as he went through the implications of this new development. Had he hurt her somehow? Oh Goddess! Not now!

...then he caught a fresh red droplet splatter onto the beginning of the stream. In surprise, Emil looked down and saw another streak of liquid scarlet running down the length of his chest and stomach, and pooling in the gap between Marta's other tight gripping arm and his frame.

"_Your nose is bleeding!"_

Emil's right arm shot up to his face, in response to the girl's barely restrained panic. Thanks to his strength, he barely stumbled at all with nothing supporting Marta's weight on that side and wiped at his nose. Yes, even in this hot shower, he felt something just a little warmer than the rest of the water streaming down his face. When he pulled the hand away, the palm was streaked with blood, already washing away in the hot spray.

"_Ooooh"_ There was something sympathetic about that noise, punctuated by Marta wiping a renewed stream of blood off the boy's face. "I'm so sorry this had to happen Emil!"

The boy brought his attention to the girl once more, but she had already pulled her head away from his. Soon her weight pulled away, and Emil started to feel a pull moving his upper half backwards, or at least trying to. On reflex, he leaned forward to compensate.

It was uncomfortably enough without the feeling of Marta making a single, light thrusting motion against his back. The fact that it may not have been intentional did little to comfort him.

Fortunately, what followed it was a sudden weight loss as—in the blink of an eye—Marta at last unwrapped her legs from his frame and brought her feet back to the floor with a wet smack.

Emil felt like he could breathe again. An enormous weight had been lifted off his shoulders (and back) and even with his blood still trickling out his nose and onto the floor, he felt relieved.

"You just stay in here for a bit and rinse that off, okay?" She tried not to sound like someone's mom. "I'll go make us breakfast!"

_No, er, wait! Yes!...No!_ "Okay," Emil finally answered.

"Oh, one more thing!" Emil then felt Marta grip his shoulder and spin him in place. The sudden twirl, combined with the blood loss, made his world keep spinning for just a second longer than he did.

When he was focused, a soaking wet Marta greeted him. Unashamed and smiling, her hair draped over her neck, and he had that sight all to himself.

Still, like many things in the few minutes transpired, Emil scarcely had the chance to admire that image before Marta gripped his face in her hands and pulled him forward. His lips met hers, and before he knew it, a second tongue had found its way into his mouth, wrestling for space with the first for one, two, five, and ten seconds before retreating, satisfied with the results of their steamy sparring match.

She hadn't needed to catch her breath at all.

"...Good morning!" She finished with a chirp.

She lifted her leg and gently kicked open the glass door behind her, a metallic creek echoing in the mist. She pivoted on her still-grounded heel, letting her hair gently whip Emil before stepping out of the stall and out of Emil's sight.

_What just happened?_

Emil looked down at the bloodstain that started at his nose, and further still, the rigid mass that wouldn't be going away for a while.

_Oh...right._

Far be it from him to wonder why Marta did some of the things she did, but...right here, in the middle of the shower? Was that all she wanted from this encounter? What happened to waiting before marriage? Was he still a virgin?

Girls were confusing.

Then again, maybe that was just Marta.

Bringing his eyes downward again, another question came to occupy his thoughts.

_How __**does**__ it stay so hard_...Emil's question began with another stream of blood issuing from his nostrils..._when I'm losing this much blood?_

xxx

The loss of the "antenna" on his head, along with the rest of his ragged mop, was the only indication that Emil had showered recently. He was back in his navy blue "Knight" outfit, but for now, he felt no cleaner coming out of the shower than he had going in, no matter how smooth his hair felt or grease-free his skin was. Heck, a slight redness remained on his upper lip where he couldn't have scrubbed the blood away completely; reminding him of something he could remember well enough on his own.

Nothing could wash Marta away.

Speaking of whom, Emil found her pouring a slow string of maple syrup over a stack of pancakes, on the side of which was another fully syrup'd plate of the same dish. Her cooking wasn't as toxic as it was during the first weeks they knew each other, but that was the least of Emil's worries.

For starters, while she wasn't as..._naked_ as he remembered her being seven minutes ago. She was now draped in a slightly-too-large-for-her red bathrobe.

Best to raise the issue now, while his thoughts were still coherent.

"Um...Marta?"

Marta's head shot up at the sound of his voice. First there was surprise that he was out this early, then a smile that would have made Emil's heart leap with joy were he not about to ask the question he did.

"Oh, Emil! I hope you like flapjacks!" She tilted the syrup bottle just a little more than ninety degrees to let the last string of syrup snap free from head before she snapped the lid shut. "You did say you wanted these for breakfast didn't you?"

"What..." He didn't want to ask. Didn't want to know. But he had to. "...What was that all about?"

One of her eyebrows rose above the other. Confusion? What was there to be confused about?

"What was _what_ all about Emil?" She still had that same cheerful tone that had followed him into the shower. "It's my turn to make breakfast today, isn't it?"

"No," He took a deep breath, trying to focus, "I mean, you know, the sh-..." Emil stumbled over the word 'shower' as if his leg had been caught in a root.

She leaned over the table, her finger tracing invisible scribbles over the hardwood top. "The what?" She gave Emil a much bigger grin than he could handle at the moment.

"Younakedintheshower!" He finally managed to blurt it out. "Why?"

Marta leaned her head a bit closer to the table, her eyes half closed. "You're mumbling Emil, say that again?"

_Say it again? No!_ It was embarrassing enough saying it the first time.

"Uh, er..." This was getting nowhere. He had to get to the heart of the matter. Maybe that would have sounded less awkward.

He ran the wording of the question about to leave his mouth when he realized it would have sounded even worse.

"Well?" Marta prompted again. Her smile didn't waver in the slightest.

"Areyousureyouwanttowaittilwe'remarried?!" Emil said it, realized he didn't want to say it, then realized you couldn't pull sound out of the air, never mind a listener's ears.

Marta's smile got bigger. She understood _that_ set of mumbling clear as day.

She cleared the table in one bound and tackled Emil to the floor.

"Oh Emil!" She used that word combination for the umpteenth time that morning, this time with another flavoring of girlish giggles. "I didn't know you had it in you!"

"Eh?!"

"Look, Emil! I told you we wouldn't roll around the hay until after we say 'I do,' so that's that," She pulled her face away from the boy to wag her finger like a mother catching their child with a hand in the cookie jar. Her next words, however, didn't agree with that gesture, "but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one tired of waiting."

Emil blinked. "You are?"

"A little...but it'll be well worth the wait once we tie the knot."

Marta didn't dismount her befuddled knight, but at last pulled herself into a kneeling position. Emil's face reddened again when he noticed his own legs were pinned between hers, still concealed by the fluffy robe, but no less embarrassing.

"On the other hand..."

That's exactly what Emil (didn't) want to hear! If Marta felt him shiver, her expression spoke nothing of it.

"...Summer's right around the corner, and we still don't have air-conditioning," she began with a pout. "...So now that we're okay with seeing _more _of each other..." she leaned in again, her half-closed eyes joining with that unflappable grin to destroy all pretense of innocence the ginger-haired maiden had displayed that morning. "...I think we can keep cool if we stop wearing pajamas to bed."

She reached down and slid her fingers between Emil's chest and his loosely wrapped scarf, prying it away from his neck.

"...Or anything else, really."

What did one say to that?

"Sure," his brain said for him.

Even after all he had learned in their first months together, Emil started wondering if there were some merits to keeping his mouth shut after all.

**THE LIVIN' END.**


End file.
